Or do one even better and stay silent while also threatening any media outlets that report the terms. Now you get weakness, confirmation, and lying all in one package with a ribbon bow on top.

Hey now, someone doesn’t need to be an abusive piece of shit to get a gummy. They could just really be into grandma.

Time to invest in ivermectin suppliers.

Legal, probably. Whichever corporations push that hypothetical bill are going to write it very specifically to ensure that it excludes their use cases.

Here’s an example of how they could do it:

S.A.V.E.K.I.D.S:
Support Age Verification Environments Keeping Internet Detectable Signals

Blah blah pretext and background information…

Blah blah surface-level purported reason for the bill is to prevent kids from bypassing age verification checks by using a VPN to pretend they’re a resident of another country…

No entity operating in or doing business within <jurisdiction> may provide services or make available technology that irreversibly redirects, masks, or otherwise obscures internet-destined traffic to appear as originating from any source other than the internet-connected network in which it was generated.

Site–to-site VPN? Fine, it’s destined for the intranet.
NAT? Also fine, it is the originating internet-connected network.
HTTP reverse proxies? Still fine, they pass the origin IP along.

VPN that routes all traffic through it? You’re getting locked up and they’re throwing away the key.

“New legislation mandates that we no longer offer the VPN connections necessary for our remote workers to access the company intranet off premises. Starting immediately, all employees are to return to office 7 days a week. If this does not work for you, please reach out to HR and they will accept that as your resignation in lieu of a written document.”

— Meta (the corp pushing the age verification laws), probably.

There’s a few of them. Notably, the guy who didn’t care that AI art is built on the back of copyright violations getting pissy about his AI-generated art not being eligible for copyright.

But more importantly here, I don’t think most artists in the gaming industry are in much of a position where they can stand by their artistic integrity. If every publisher pushes studios into using AI to be more “productive”, the choice becomes between slopping or starving—and most people don’t like starving.

We as consumers are the only ones that can afford to push back against this shit. Our survival doesn’t rely on buying DLSS 5 games so we have the ability to boycott them to send a message.

If you thought Flock cameras were a bad situation, imagine not being able to query, read, write, or probably even speak about topics that they decide are “unpatriotic” or “satanic”.

The only difference between right now and then is that right now they aren’t doing anything about it. They already have the data about people’s opinions and leanings as a side effect of the massive network of tracking built for targeted advertising.

It will obviously be worse when we’re stuck renting computers, but what you’re describing is a today problem just as much as it’s a future problem. The only reason it hasn’t turned full 1984 is because they haven’t gone full mask off yet.

No, it won’t. It will cause more of the supply to be reallocated away from consumers into enterprise, and that is exactly what the big tech companies want to see happen.

Having access to a computer and phone is as much of a necessity to survive in modern society as internet is. When personal computing is unaffordable to the point where subscription computing is a good enough “deal” for consumers to jump on, the ball will start rolling towards the inevitable price squeeze that we have no choice but to accept.

Great, now we’re going to have them shooting more people because they felt threatened by large suitcases that “might have a bomb” in it.

Is that for USB A and USB C? USB PD could be riskier if it shorts VBUS to D+ or D- since it can negotiate up to 12 volts, IIRC

Damaged ports with shorted pins, voltage fluctuations, etc.

The passenger electrical system is as isolated from the the rest of the plane as possible, but if the entire thing fails, sure then yeah you’re fucked and have bigger problems

Most modern airplanes I have seen have in-seat USB charging ports

You probably shouldn’t trust those to actually work. Or even to be safe enough to not kill whatever you plug into them.

No, it is bad.

Suppose it’s used to verify your age when visiting Pornhub. How is Pornhub going to trust the user’s computer didn’t lie about the user’s age? A “just trust me bro” sent by the browser isn’t going to suffice; teenagers would find a way around that.

Thr attestation will have to be cryptographically signed by some trusted party—and that’s either going to be the government, or the operating system vendor.

If it’s the government holding the signing keys: the website can now verify that you’re a resident of $state in $country and use that for fingerprinting and targeted advertising. And what if your country doesn’t participate, or if Pornhub doesn’t trust the signing keys used by the government of Estonia? Tough shit, no porn for you! It would be impractical to manage all those keys, though, so why not instead leave it up to the operating system vendor?

If it is left the operating system vendor, it’s going to end up being exactly the same as Google Play Service’s SafetyNet “feature”. If you’re not using an approved operating system (a.k.a. Windows, MacOS, stock Android, iOS) you’re not visiting Pornhub. Or a banking app. Or applying for jobs. Etc.

This bill is a poison pill for device ownership and FOSS operating systems being handed to corporations on a silver platter.

“Conservatism has exactly one proposition, to wit: there is an in-group group in which the law protects but does not bind, and there is an out-group in which the law binds but does not protect.”

I’m sure I didn’t quote that properly, but you get the point.

When viewing reality through the lens of life being zero-sum, if one is not policing others, they are being policed. Add xenophobia and fear of others who are noncomforming and you end up with someone who feels the need to judge everyone around them.

If Valve fails, we’ll have so many great alternatives, though!

• Epic Games Store, with it’s… uh… better fee structure that benefits the publishers.
• EA’s Origin, with direct access to the exact same Origin website but instead presented through an Electron app.
• Ubisoft Connect, with the latest access to Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed games and related reskins sold under different IP.
• Battle.net, with the feature to run partially-downloaded games and stream missing assets in on demand.
• GOG, with real installers for its games that you can hoard to a hard drive sitting in your closet. (No sarcism. This one isn’t terrible)
• The Microsoft Store, with its incredible ability to revoke your license for the Notepad.exe program that comes installed with Windows.

Who needs a forum, mod portal, user reviews, or Linux support anyways?

I can’t remember if I was wearing it before, but I’m not wearing it now. It’s probably fine. I think. Maybe.

I didn’t even need to click on the link to know it pointed to civil forfeiture. The fact that they’re not required to destroy whatever they steal creates one hell of a perverse incentive to keep doing it.

Their what now? That’s ICE’s money. After the pulled the immigrant out of his bed, that money was just laying there. Nobody owns it, so it’s finders keepers. /s

Hey now, it’s not just a scheme to deport legal immigrants—That second arrest also inflates their numbers to look successful.

I can’t wait for the Criminal Repercussions In Manipulating Electees act.